I am the Home and School Club president at El Toro Elementary
where my son is in the 5th grade and I have a daughter who is a
junior at Live Oak High School.
Dear Editor,
I am the Home and School Club president at El Toro Elementary where my son is in the 5th grade and I have a daughter who is a junior at Live Oak High School.
I encourage our school board to reconsider increasing class sizes. Both of my children had the opportunity to attend kindergarten with a 1 to 20 ratio. I feel they both benefited enormously from this, as did their teachers. When my son started kindergarten I remember being taken aback by the huge difference in the standards he was expected to achieve compared to those of my daughter six years prior. These standards continue to increase, putting added pressure on our young children and the teachers.
Today, our kinders come to school with a wide range of abilities, talents, languages and special needs. Teachers are already trying to accommodate all the demands of mainstreaming and working with special needs children and implementing extremely high standards in a reduced class size. And now, our board expects them to meet these already difficult standards while increasing class size? We cannot have it both ways. If we want our kindergartners reading, writing and meeting these standards, we cannot move the ratio back to 1 to 29. And why is this increase in class size being suggested when our district administration continues to be over-staffed at the district office level, and our superintendent continues to accept an annual 3 percent increase in salary? Perhaps it is time they look a bit higher when deciding where cuts should be made. Why is it that our children and our under-appreciated and under-paid teachers have to bear the weight of the district’s financial burdens?
It’s time the board listens. We are the voters and we are the parents of the children you are serving. We are their voice. And, we are concerned about the decisions that will affect their future.
Sue Kirk, Morgan Hill
School cuts should start at the top, then work their way down
Dear Editor,
I am the mother of six children and I care about what happens in our schools. I’ve been very involved since my first child started kindergarten 22 years ago. I, along with hundreds of other involved parents, have given countless hours of our time. It is our children these cuts will affect.
These kids are our future and will themselves become teachers, lawyers, mechanics, doctors, and somewhere in the United States, one will become our president. Will we tell these students that his or her school will be closed? Will we tell him or her they will end up in an overcrowded classroom?
In many school districts across the state, superintendents and administrators are passing on pay raises and taking pay cuts to help their districts make ends meet. Morgan Hill parents are wondering why our administrators have not offered to do the same. Why do we have more administrators than necessary on staff?
Will one kindergarten teacher be forced to teach 30 5-year-old students?
How can we possibly decrease resource and speech teachers? Aren’t these the kids who need help the most?
While I realize every program cannot be saved, the suggestion from the community is that this administration should begin cutting from the top. We are in a nationwide recession, we have families losing their homes and struggling to put food on their tables, while we have administrators accepting pay increases simply because it states so in a contract. Well, it’s time to renegotiate those contracts.
Cindy Peterson, Morgan Hill
Editorial opines using a false hypothesis
Dear Editor,
The title of the editorial in the Morgan Hill Times March 13 edition “Residents, which is it: cheaper service or greener garbage?” is a false hypothesis.
What the GreenWaste Recovery company is offering is additional convenience services to the homeowner.
At present their proposed charges would be more expensive, but that is not the issue. The issue is that the “cheaper services” offered by South Valley Disposal are also the “greener ones.” That was not explained to the homeowners for their vote in the county’s survey.
Let me list the items where the “cheaper service” is the greener one.
n Weekly recycling pickups mean the trucks come once a week rather than every other week. That is good for the homeowner’s memory but it costs twice the trips – driver time and gasoline. That is not greening.
n Single stream recycling proposed by GWR means that now the paper is mixed with food cans which may contaminate the paper. SVD has trucks for recycling materials that have two sections. One to keep the paper pristine and separated from the other recyclables. That is not greening.
n I was informed that with the GWR scheme, the recycling container size would be proportional to the garbage container chosen. The very successful garbage reduction program that has been achieved is due to the fact that large recycling containers drew the load off the garbage container. Reducing the size of the recycling containers based on the small garbage container need is false logic. That is not greening.
n I live in Holiday Lake Estates. We have 200 homes in the county and 300 homes in the city. SVD treats us all under their “city” program. We have a very well-run system partly because many folks have extra 64 gallon recycling containers and extra 96 gallon yardwaste containers. If a different company wins the county trash contract and employs the new container proposals then 800 to 1,000 containers would have to be replaced. There is nothing wrong with the ones we have. That is not greening.
Carl McCaw, Morgan Hill
